Rate your students: The criminal justice major, how do they compare with other majors?

• In Event: Service Learning & Community Engagement in Criminology Courses

Abstract

As academicians we often are able to say which students are likely to successfully complete our courses. Some blossom late, but “steady wins the race,” may be an apt analogy when “guessing” which of the young scholars sitting before us will successfully complete the semester, and ultimately graduate. With a narrower view as an instructor of criminal justice, this mind game played with self includes another factor—namely; will that student be a criminal justice major or some other major? Invariably over the years a student from another major grabs that spot. This frequent outcome begs the answer to the question—where are the criminal justice graduates today? Are they utilizing the degree they earned, and how do they fare when compared to other graduates. To address this question the researchers decided to compare success with other majors using both secondary and primary data—some gathered via interviews with professors and criminal justice professionals intricately and intimately connected to the field. The results are interesting—in that it informs the dialogue on such issues as retention, forecasting success and potential approaches to employ both in and out of the classroom as we nurture the students who have declared criminal justice as their major.

Authors

• Lorraine Samuels, Huston-Tillotson University

• Nelseta Walters Jones, University of Maryland Eastern Shore